What Is The Moral Of The Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad-Gita teaches the concept of escaping the cycle of life and death by freeing oneself from selfish actions and focusing entirely on the divine in actions. If a person is able to act with no selfishness towards God he will be rewarded with his karma going away and thus the dissolution of the soul. Dissolution of the soul is a key accomplishment because if the soul is gone you will never be rebirthed again and you will go to a higher place. This story starts with Dhirtarastra, the blind king, going to battle with the Pandavas in order to get control of Hastinapura. In this passage, Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, is trying to convince Arjuna, the leader of the Pandavas, to fight against the blind king. Arjuna does not want to fight
and throughout this passage, Krishna gives him reasons why he should. He who really knows my divine birth and my action, escapes rebirth when he abandons the body and he comes to me Arjuna.
Free from attraction, fear, and anger, filled with me, dependent on me, purified by the fire of knowledge, many come into my presence. As they seek refuge in me, I devote myself to them; Arjuna, men retrace my path in every way. The opening sentence of this passage states that one must have knowledge about Krishna’s divine conception and what his actions are and why they are important. If one knows this they escape rebirth, rebirth is an extremely important word in this sentence because escaping rebirth is the goal of the divine. So essentially Krishna is giving Arjuna the way to escape being born again and a way into a higher place. When Krishna says when he abandons the body and comes to me he means that one must not focus on the pleasures and actions of the body and instead focus purely on the divine. The next stanza might be the most important because when he says free from attraction, fear, and anger he is essentially saying he must get rid of that and instead try to go down the path of devotion. The path of devotion is one of the 3 paths and is the most important one because it leads to Sattva. Sattva is lucidity and one gets this through spiritual
discipline. One knows he has Sattva when he experiences blissful joy which is essentially better than happiness. The other 2 paths are the path of action and knowledge which lead to different qualities of nature such as rajas which are passion and tamas which is inertia. The difference between these two and Sattva is these 2 lead to ruin while Sattva leads to blissful joy. In the next line the word fire is used to describe knowledge, essentially since once, a fire starts it spreads very fast he is saying the same about knowledge, once you get a little bit of knowledge it eventually spreads throughout the body until you are filled with knowledge. Once you get this knowledge you will come into Krishna’s presence just as so many have. Once you have devoted yourself to Krishna and seek refuge in him, that is when Krishna will devote himself to you in finding Sattva. The final sentence is very important because he is saying how many men try to track Krishna’s steps to devotion and Arjuna should do the same. After all of this Arjuna still needs evidence of Krishna’s divine power before he steps into battle. Krishna eventually comes to Arjuna in “the power of a thousand suns” and Arjuna finally realizes what Krishna was saying throughout the passage above and now Arjuna has complete faith. The Gita ends with Krishna stating how Arjuna must choose either to go in the evil direction and not go into battle or choose the good direction and go into battle. Arjuna is convinced and decides to go into battle.